Addiction and Crime
- Drug Addiction

This is a difficult subject to address
as the relationship between the two is complex and thought-provoking.

We know that many addicts resort to
crime to pay for their habit but there also some people who are addicted
to the criminal act itself. So we have people who wouldn’t normally
commit crime but have only turned to it out of an act of desperation
and then there are those people who have already committed crime and
then use this to fund their habit.

Punish or treatment?

The question is: do we punish people
who commit crime to fund their addiction by locking them up or do we
help them by sending them into rehab?

Some people may see the latter option
this as ‘going soft’ on criminals but there is a difference
between the two and if treatment helps them to kick their habit and
prevent re-offending then it has to be considered as an option.

The ‘hang them and flog them’
brigade may differ but people who have committed crimes in order to
pay for their addiction may benefit more from help and treatment rather
than prison. The problem with prison is that drugs can be accessed (or
smuggled in) whilst they are confined which means that they are able
to continue with their habit.

This means that they are unlikely to
stop their addiction and will likely re-offend once they leave prison.

The costs of dealing with this are
prohibitively expensive so a better option may be to treat addicts rather
than punishing them. There is evidence to show that addicts are less
likely to re-offend if they receive treatment (source: 2008, Manchester UniversityNationalDrug
Evidence Centre).

Legalise drugs?

Drug dealing is big business not just
in the UK but around the world. There are organised drug cartels in
many countries that use the proceeds of this to fund criminal activity
which means that there is an ongoing battle between them and the authorities
- which is likely to continue.

One idea put forward is that of legalising
drugs. Supporters of this argue that it would reduce crime especially
drug-dealing as addicts wouldn’t have to resort to criminal behaviour
to fund their habit. The costs of drugs could be controlled and set
a rate which addicts could afford without having to steal in order to
do so. Plus these drugs could be taxed and the revenue from these used
to fund drug rehabilitation treatment.

There is also the possibility that
doing this will lessen the attraction. Many of us enjoy something which
is considered to be ‘forbidden fruit’ and part of that attraction
is the knowledge that what we are doing has an element of risk.

However, opponents of this claim that
it would lead to many more addicts, which would place an extra burden
on taxpayers, the authorities and the State as a whole.

What do you do with people who are
addicted to committing an offence? They may or may not be addicted to
drugs but they still have an addiction, which in this case is to crime.
There is no easy answer to this and work is still being undertaken into
how this might be solved.

It has been suggested that unless we
can change human nature itself then crime will always be with us.